Slowly, day by day, Charles regained Mart"s interest and a measure of his confidence. Having learned what to avoid and what to emphasize, he now deplored the drink habits of his brothers, and gently suggested that the old father needed help. They played cards occasionally during such times as household cares drew Bertha away, and held much discussion of mines and mining--though here Mart was singularly reticent, and afforded little information about his own affairs. His trust in Charles did not go so far as that. With Crego, however, he freely discussed his condition, for the lawyer had written his new will, and was in possession of it.
"I"m like a battered old tin can," he said once. "Did ye ever try to put a tin can back into shape? Ye cannot. If ye push it back here, it bulges there. The doctors are tryin" hard to take the kinks out o" me, but "tis impossible--I see that--but I may live on for a long time. Already me mind misgives me about Bertie--she"s too young to be tied up to a shoulder-shotten old plug like mesilf."
To this Crego soothingly responded. "I don"t think you need to worry.
She"s as happy as a blackbird in spring."
Once he said to Bertha: "I niver intended to limp around like this. I niver thought to be the skate I am this day," and his despondency darkened his face as he spoke. "I could not blame you if you threw me out. I"m only a big nuisance."
"You will be if you talk like that," she briskly answered, and that is all she seemed to make of his protest. She had indeed been reared in an atmosphere of loyalty to marriage as well as of chast.i.ty, and she never for a moment considered her vows weakened by her husband"s broken frame.
This fidelity Charles discovered to his own confusion one night as he came home inflamed by liquor and reckless of hand, to find her sitting alone in the library writing a letter. It was not late, but Mart, feeling tired, had gone to bed, and Mrs. Gilman was in Sibley.
Bertha looked up as he entered, and without observing that he was drunk, went on with her writing, which was ever a painful ceremony with her.
Dropping his coat where he stood, and with his hat awry on the red globe of his head, the dastard staggered towards her, his eyes lit with a glare of reckless desire.
"Say," he began, "this is luck. I want "o talk with you, Bertie. I want "o find out why you run away from me? What"s the matter with me, anyhow?"
She realized now the foul, satyr-like mood of the man, and sprang up tense and strong, silently confronting him.
He mumbled with a grin: "You"re a peach! What"s the matter? Why don"t you like me? Ain"t I all right? I"m a gentleman."
His words were babble, but the look in his eyes, the loose slaver of his lips, both scared and angered her, and as he pushed against her, clumsily trying to hook his arm about her waist, she struck him sharply with the full weight of her arm and shoulder, and he tottered and fell sprawling. With a curse in his teeth he caught at a chair, recovered his balance, and faced her with a look of fury that would have appalled one less experienced than she.
"You little fool," he snarled, "don"t you do that again!"
"_Stop!_" She did not lift her voice, but the word arrested him. "Do you want to die?" The word _die_ pierced the mist of his madness. "What do you think Mart will say to this?"
He shivered and grew pale under the force of his brother"s name uttered in that tone. He began to melt, subsiding into a jelly-ma.s.s of fear.
"Don"t tell Mart, for Christ"s sake! I didn"t mean nothing. Don"t do it, I beg--I beg!"
She looked at him and seemed to grow in years as she searched his wretched body for its soul. "If you don"t pull out of this house to-morrow I"ll let him know just the kind of dead-head boarder you are.
You haven"t fooled me any--not for a minute. I"ve put up with you for his sake, but to-night settles it. You go! I"ve stood a lot from you, but your meal-ticket is no good after to-morrow morning--you _sabe_?
It"s you to the outside to-morrow. Now get out, or I call Mart."
He turned and shuffled from the room, leaving his battered hat at her feet.
She waited till she heard him close his door; then, with a look of disgust on her face, picked up his hat and coat, and hung them on the rack in the hall. "I"m sorry for Mart," she said to herself. "He _was_ company for him, but I can"t stand the loafer a day longer. I hope I never see him again."
He did not get down to breakfast, and for this she was glad; but he sought opportunity a little later to plead for clemency. "Give me another chance. I was drunk. I didn"t mean it."
She remained inexorable. "Not for a second," she succinctly replied. "I don"t care how you fix it with Mart. Smooth it up as best you can, but fly this coop." And her face expressed such contempt that he crept away, flabby and faltering, to his brother.
"I"ve been telegraphed for, and must go," he said. "And, by the way, I need a little ready mon to carry me to the little old town. As soon as I get to work I"ll send you a check."
Mart handed him the money in silence, and waited till he had folded and put away the bills. Then he said: "Charles, you was always the smart one of the family, and ye"d be all right now if ye"d pa.s.s the booze and get down to hard work. It"s _time_ ye were off, for ye"ve done nothin" but loaf and drink here. I"ve enjoyed your talk--part of the time; but I can see ye"d grow onto me here like a wart, and that"s bad for you and bad for me, and so I"m glad ye"re going."
"Can"t you--" He was going to ask for a position--something easy with big pay--when he saw that such a request would make his telegram a lie.
As he hesitated Mart continued: "No, I"ll back no play for ye. I"m a gambler, but I take no chances of that kind. If you see the old father, write and tell me how he is."
Charles, though filled with rising fury, was sober enough to know in what danger he stood, and forcing a smile to his face, shook hands and went out to his carriage--alone.
As Mart met Bertha a few minutes later he remarked, with calm directness: "There goes a cheap rounder and a sponge. I"ve been a gambler and a saloon-keeper, but I never got the notion that I could live without doin" something. Charles was a smart lad, but the divil has him by the neck, and to give money is to give him drink."
Bertha remained silent, her own indictment was so much more severe.
CHAPTER VIII
BERTHA RECEIVES AN INVITATION
Colorado Springs lies in a shallow valley, under a genial sun, at almost the exact level of the summit of Mt. Washington. From the railway train, as it crawls over the hills to the east, it looks like a toy village, but is, in fact, a busy little city. To ride along its wide and leafy streets in summer, to breathe its crystalline airs in winter, is to lose belief in the necessity of disease. The grave seems afar off.
And yet it was built, and is now supported, by those who, fearing death, fled the lower, miasmatic levels of the world, and who, having abandoned all hope (or desire) of return, are loyally developing and adorning their adopted home. These fugitives are for the most part contented exiles--men as well as women--who have come to enjoy their enforced stay here beside the peaks; and their devotion to the town and its surroundings is unmistakably sincere, for they believe that the climate and the water have prolonged their lives.
Not all even of these seekers for health are ill, or even weakly, at present; on the contrary, many of them are stalwart hands at golf, and others are seasoned hors.e.m.e.n. In addition to those who are resident in their own behalf are many husbands attendant upon ailing wives, and blooming wives called to the care of weazened and querulous husbands, and parents who came bringing a son or daughter on whom the pale shadow of the White Death had fallen. But, after all, these Easterners color but they do not dominate the life of the town, which is a market-place for a wide region, and a place of comfort for well-to-do miners. It is, also, a Western town, with all a Western town"s customary activities, and the traveller would hardly know it for a health resort, so cheerful and lively is the aspect of its streets, where everything denotes comfort and content.
In addition to the elements denoted above, it is also taken to be a desirable social centre and a charming place of residence for men like Marshall Haney, who, having made their pile in the mountain camps, have a reasonable desire to put their gold in evidence--"to get some good of their dust," as Williams might say. Here and there along the princ.i.p.al avenues are luxurious homes--absurdly pretentious in some instances--which are pointed out to visitors as the residences of the big miners. They are especially given to good horses also, and ride or drive industriously, mixing very little with the more cultured and sophisticated of their neighbors, for whom they furnish a never-ending comedy of manners. "A beautiful mixture for a novelist," Congdon often said.
Yes, the town has its restricted "Smart Set," in imitation of New York city, and its literary and artistic groups (small, of course), and its staid circle of wealth and privilege, and within defined limits and at certain formal civic functions these various elements meet and interfuse genially if not sincerely. However, the bitter fact remains that the microcosm is already divided into cla.s.ses and ma.s.ses in a way which would be humorous if it were not so deeply significant of a deplorable change in American life. Squire Crego, in discussing this very matter with Frank Congdon, the portrait-painter, put it thus: "This division of interest is inevitable. What can you do? The wife of the man who cobbles my shoes or the daughter of the grocer who supplies my sugar is, in the eyes of G.o.d, undoubtedly of the same value as my own wife, but they don"t _interest_ me. As a social democrat, I may wish sincerely to do them good, but, confound it, to wish to do them good is an impertinence.
And when I"ve tried to bring these elements together in my house I have always failed. Mrs. Crego, while being most gracious and cordial, has, nevertheless, managed to make the upholsterer chilly, and to freeze the grocer"s wife entirely out of the picture."
"There"s one comfort: it isn"t a matter of money. If it were, where would the Congdons be?"
"No, it isn"t really a matter of money, and in a certain sense it isn"t a matter of brains. It"s a question of--"
"_Savoir faire._"
"Precisely. You haven"t a cent, so you say frequently--" Congdon stopped him, gravely.
"I owe you fifty--I was just going down into my jeans to pay it, when I suddenly recalled--"
"Don"t interrupt the court. You haven"t a cent, we"ll say, but you go everywhere and are welcome. Why?"
"That"s just it. Why? If you really want to know, I"ll tell you. It"s all on account of Lee. Lee is a mighty smart girl. She has a cinch on the gray matter of this family."
"You do yourself an injustice."
"Thank you."
Crego pursued his argument. "There isn"t any place that a man of your type can"t go if you want to, because you take something with you. You mix. And Haney, for example--to return to the concrete again--Haney would make a most interesting guest at one"s dinner-table, but the wife, clever as she is, is impossible--or, at least, Mrs. Crego thinks she is."